the white house thinks of the debt ceiling as part three of a three-step solution to the fiscal cliff. they are asking that any deal that they cut with the republicans include some mechanism that is a permanent solution to avoid a debt ceiling nightmare, like we had last year. here's what president obama said when he spoke to business ceos about this earlier today. >> i want to send a very clear message to people here, we are not going to play that game next year. if congress in any way suggests that they're going to tie negotiations to debt ceiling votes, and take us to the brink of default once again, as part of a budget negotiation, which, by the way, we have never done in our history, until we did it last year, i will not play that game. because we have got to break that habit before it starts. >> reporter: so just to be very clear, the white house sees this as three steps. a fiscal deal would include, one, some measure that would raise revenue. tax raising. two, a sequester, that's all those budget cuts that are going to kick in, some way to save money through spending cuts, prob